October 22, 2009

You know, Dick Cheney was once a student here at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Have we ever done anything to honor him? I think it would be interesting to start a movement to have a monument to the man erected here in on campus. You could do a Michael Moore (or Uncle Jimbo) -style film project: Go around with a clipboard and try to get people to sign a petition.

Rebuilding Iraq has left us broke -- we cannot rebuild another country.

In all fairness, I could probably fund the rebuilding of Afghanistan given what it was before we got there :)

More seriously, I would like to see some figures about the cost of infrastructure and security since 2003 in Iraq (a net, not gross) compared to TARP, bailouts, and this administration's stimulus package if we're going talk about "what made us broke".

He also swore he never heard anything but sweetnes and light pass the lips of Jeremiah Wright. He swore that if only we passed the stimulus, unemployment wouldn't go over 8%. He swore he wrote "Dreams of My Father," or whtever that meretricious piece of gasbaggery is called.

He didn't mean any of it. He's a liar. He has always been a liar. And now, because 52% of this coutry are a bunch of goddamned idiots, good men will die because he's a liar. But who cares? Not President Shortpants. If they're not befuddled children, soldiers are all racist white trash Faux News-watching dittohead teabaggers anyway. "Screw them," in the words of the Democrats' most eloquent spokesman.

It is becoming more and more disturbing that our present administration wants to continually play the child's game of "not my fault" and finger point rather than lead.

It would appear that the only strategy for next year's mid-terms is: "Hey- don't look at how it's not any better since we're in office! It's still not our fault!"

Desperation to have something on the board that can be percived as true action is driving the Democrat Party right now. 10 months and nothing!

Anyone here remember the tearing down of the economy Bush - high DOW, low unemployment - by the self-serving Demoncrat Party: " Well, people aren't "FEELING" that they are doing well". Of course, many of them have lost their jobs under Obama, so how do they feel now? Bet you most would be happy to be suffering under Bush again rather than being foreclosed on and having to accept welfare.

Oh, forgive me, I forgot we were including Democrats in that. They ARE happier to be out of work.

The point? This is a bad economy now, but it's not the Great Depression, which was so bad, it gave FDR 4 victories. Running against the past isn't going to work as well this time. I'm betting it won't still work in 2012.

Frederer - if Bush & Cheney committed "war crimes" where are the piles of stinking corpses? Where are the death pits? The camps? The gas vans? The mobile killing squads? Yeah I have a pretty high threshold for throwing around the phrase "war crimes". It can't be just ANYTHING you want it to be.

Alex, I'm not saying they committed war crimes by lying (which wasn't a war crime like torture is), but if you're looking for piles of dead civilians, you'll find them in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think you want a different metric.

"You make me mad... because everything you said for 7 years in office resulted in the worst shit storm to hit this country in a really long time, much of which didn't have to happen, and now you seem to think that on the basis of your stupidity, you should keep talking."

So yeah, I'm a whiner.

As for your formula, do you think Democrats are whiners and fascists? Because then it equals 1.

and just how do you propose to do that, genius? Who will fill the power void once the West pulls out?

Wow. That sounds exactly like what some of the more rational geopolitical realists said from 2006-2008 in an answer to the endless drumbeat from the left over Iraq. I happen to agree with you, but wonder where all of your cohorts were in 2006-2008 instead of claiming the war was lost.

Alex, first, someone who disagrees with you is not necessarily a liar. I do believe what I say. Second, we've killed a lot of civilians. It happens in war. I did not say it was a war crime. I just said that measuring by dead civilians is not the way to assess war crimes.

A-stan is not a nation state in the true sense of the word. It's a confederation of tribes, Iraq without pretensions.

You stabilize A-stan the old-fashioned way - kill the enemy. Most insurgencies fail (except those aided and abetted by the Democrat Party) and you do it the way it was done by Petraeus & Co. Make it so unhealthy for the bad guys they find something else to do - those that are still alive.

We'll leave a government that isn't too flaky and have a presence there (mostly some A teams, I'd guess), but nobody wants to occupy the place and you can't rebuild somewhere that was nothing but mud huts to begin with.

Eddutcher, your not simply a moron. You are a sneering, self-righteous jerk of a moron. Well done.

Dick Cheney can burn in hell. I wonder in what universe DOUBLING the number of troops in theater since his spiraling catastrophe of an administration is "dithering".

Not pouring hundreds of thousands of troops into a situation where we don't even have a reliable partner in the national government isn't dithering. It's a modicum of intelligence, which apparently drained out of the Republican party some time ago.

I feel quite uncertain about whether or not the war in Afghanistan is good policy. But there's no question that in the 2008 campaign Obama seized upon Afghanistan as the "good war" that Bush was ignoring.

Some would say (by "some" I mean "me") that Obama's tough guy act was pure make believe. Afghanistan wasn't important to him because he had any real commitment to understanding U.S. global military strategy. It was important to him to use as a foil to "Bush's war" in Iraq. He was doing nothing more than parroting the nitwits who demanded that Bush produce Obama's body. He was standing on the shoulders of the midgets.

When you play petty political games with really important decisions -- such as whether or not to put U.S. troops in a combat zone -- you deserve to be called out.

Henry, I think you're right. It was like the insurance mandate -- mostly about campaigning, not governing. Obama's serious about it now, and probably wasn't then. If you had to choose that or the opposite, you'd choose that, right?

"10/21/09Montagne Montagne defense of Chairman Mao:...."The effects of Mao's policies are not equivalent to his writings. Nowhere did Mao write, "We must starve 50 million peasants for the good of China." That happened as a consequence of his policies, which aren't at all required to be equivalent to his stated philosophies. Why this even has to be pointed out suffers my patience. I think there are fools about."

Daniel wrote: "If you had to choose that or the opposite, you'd choose that, right?"

Certainly, though Obama still seems to be dithering. Contra to Montagne's assertion, the issue isn't about how many troops are in a theater but what their mission is and whether or not there's the political commitment to give them the resources to achieve it.

I think consolidating in Iraq is the right move (hell, maybe we go Biden in Afghanistan), but that is exactly the opposite of what Obama campaigned on.

There are some things that a politician shouldn't be deceptive about, even in a campaign. Obama was deceptive.

No, the troops are there to protect the people who take a stand against the bad guys. As I said, there really isn't anything in the country to rebuild.

No infrastructure. Nada, kind of like the "hundreds of thousands" killed by Bushitler, right?

But I thought The Won had made up his mind - after Pelosi Galore called A-stan the Good War on Terror. He was going to go in there like MacArthur returning to the Philippines. Or was it PeeWee Herman at the porno theater?

The comments on this thread are too mush. What a strange and bizarre place it must be where lefties live. Humpty Dumpty claimed the right to have words mean whatever he wanted them to mean. Liberals have taken him one step beyond and now bombard us with "facts" as well which have no basis in reality.

Should someone invite them to return from their looking glass world? Or would we be better off leaving them there mired in their alternate reality?

Brave woman, I am awestruck by your awesomeness. This is the first suggestion I have seen anywhere by a moderate saying anything good about Cheney. Wow. Are they arching on your office yet? Keith Olbermann is likely to be nominating you for worst person in the world!!

I don't know if all readers here appreciate what you expose yourself to in academia by the positions you have been willing to take publicly.

There are lots of sound criticisms of Bush and Cheney (I was never for these guys fwiw), but the "Bush lied" thing about Iraq is so dopey it defies explanation.

If Bush knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, then going out of his way to lie and say there were was galactically stupid. What, he didn't know that when he got there, he'd have to explain where the WMDs were? "D'oh, never thought of that!"

If Bush did lie about the WMDs, then it stands to reason he would be morally depraved enough to plan to have WMDs "found" -- easy enough to do that. Only that didn't happen. Why not?

It's not that I'm shocked to consider that Bush may have been a liar. But don't liars prefer not to get caught? Can anyone propose a scenario in which a lie would be even more certain to blow up extravagantly in the liar's face than this alleged lie?

The most plausible explanation is that Bush believed there were WMDs. So did a lot of other folks, presumably reasonably intelligent and not the devil, which we stipulate for the sake of argument that Bush is. And all that made a lot of us believe it or take it seriously. After all, it seemed incredible that Hussein would bluff--and yet, that's what he said he did.

Nearly all the money we've spent to rebuild Iraq had already been spent by this time last year. If that's the reason why we can't afford to win in Afghanistan, it would have been good of Obama to tell us so back then, instead of promising to wrap things up in Iraq so we could go on to win in Afghanistan.

Stan, care to point out any facts that you take issue with rather than simply assert your right to remain ignorant of them?

I'd like to point something out. During the campaign Republicans mocked Obama when he would be willing to attack inside Pakistan with or without approval from the Pakistani government.

"If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will," Obama said.

Right as he took office, the drones started killing Al Qaeda. Also since then, Pakistan stopped signing deals with the Taliban and mounted two huge offensives, in Swat and Waziristan, to fight its domestic Taliban. This never happened under Bush.

Then the election happened. Karzai has lost any pretense at legitimacy. The government needs to be legitimate in the eyes of the population for the US to work with it, don't you think? When the McChrystal strategy that has led to all these charges of "dithering" is a total counterinsurgency campaign which pretty much has as its main objective the US winning over the trust of the people, NOT killing as many Taliban as possible as many of the mouth breathers on the conservative side seem to think?

"Well-said" Althouse says of Cheney. Althouse, when it comes to Afghanistan, you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground.

If we are not interested in defending freedom in Poland and Czechoslovkia anymore, and we like the Chavez/Castro/Zelaya axis coming from the south, then why on earth would Obama care which mountain valley in the tribal areas shown on maps as Pakistan and Afghanistan are full of our enemies or not. The dilemma for Obama is how to surrender fast enough to keep our enemies confused and real American leadership "marginalized". Obama's end game for the USA is not going to be pleasant.

You can go back to the Clinton administration to see what such brilliant people such as Bill, Hillary, Kerry, Gore and on and on, and find quotes on what they said about Iraq having WMDs. Were they lieing? They probably were given the same information that Bush received from the CIA.

"Saddam's goal ... is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed." -- Madeline Albright, 1998

"(Saddam) will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983" -- National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998

Hey guys, remember when president clinton invaded and occupied Iraq? That was awesome.

Hey, guys…remember when President Clinton denied armor requests to the Rangers in Somalia prior to the “Blackhawk Down” incident due to political expediency? Then remember how he turned tail and ran after said incident? Remember how that emboldened OBL (in OBL’s own words) to carry out further attacks leading up to that wonderful day back in 2001?

"I share the administration's goals in dealing with Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction." -- Dick Gephardt in September of 2002

"Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." -- Al Gore, 2002

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." -- Ted Kennedy, September 27, 2002

"I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force - if necessary - to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." -- John F. Kerry, Oct 2002

"As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." -- Nancy Pelosi, December 16, 1998

Conditions change. Just because the President supported the war a year ago does not mean that it's still a good idea.

If it's best for the country to wait, or to decline to increase troop numbers, then it is.

Lives are more important than hypocrisy. Johnson and Nixon and Bush made many bad decisions because of a failure to admit they had made mistakes in the past.

I'm fine with not rushing a decision to escalate. Kabul is not going to fall in a week. This is probably going to be the most important decision Obama makes, in terms of the number of lives lost. He should take his time.

I do believe the war is winnable, that it would take at least double the number of soldiers and Marines that are now there, and that the country should be aware of the length and magnitude of the commitment necessary to win the war.

If that is not possible, then the President should find a way to lose the war with the smallest loss of lives. I don't believe in mincing words about war, because that's what it would be, a loss.

But some losses are worse than others. Losing thousands of American lives in a war that we have not committed to win is a waste. Pride and hypocrisy are not worth thousands of lives.

"Rebuilding Iraq has left us broke -- we cannot rebuild another country."

Hell...we haven't rebuilt Iraq.

Or America, for that matter.

As to the topic of the post: yes, let's honor Cheney as he deserves...let's throw his torturing, mass-murdering fat ass into a Supermax prison and bury the key in the deepest part of the deep blue sea.

Rebuilding Iraq from all sources cost less than 100 billion. Pe that right wing source Wikipedia:

"As of 2009, current spending in Iraq seems to have increased a bit with some consideration of new projects. Since March 2003,the figure has come to a tune of $50 billion (US Dollars) - as the amount appropriated by the US congress in relief and reconstruction."

50 billion. Plus some other relief spending and contributions from other countries.

The entire cost of the war in 6+ years per Wikipedia is:

"As of August 2008, around $550 billion has been spent based on estimates of current expenditure rates[1], which range from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) estimate of $2 billion per week[2] to $12 billion a month, an estimate by economist Joseph Stiglitz.[3]"

Apparently we are spending about 8B per month so add another 100 billion.

650 billion over 6 years. The stimulus plan is spending 795 billion in one year for comparison.

And a lot of that 650B was spent here for salaries and uniforms and rifles and tanks and planes and whatever else it takes to put and keep an army in the field. That is economic stimulus too.

Attack the war on whatever grounds you want. It is even reasonable to say we could have put that money to better use. But thinking that the Iraq war made us broke is flat out wrong and dishonest

"Hey, guys, remember when president clinton invaded and occupied Iraq? That was awesome."

No, can't say I do. I do remember him biting his lower lip, moist eyes fluttering as he told us how we absolutely had to carpet bomb Serbia in retaliation for Milosevich's mass graves, and how necessary it was that such brutality and tyranny not be allowed to prosper.

As to the topic of the post: yes, let's honor Cheney as he deserves...let's throw his torturing, mass-murdering fat ass into a Supermax prison and bury the key in the deepest part of the deep blue sea.

That's high comedy. I guess you're hiding your pills under the mattress?

Now, do we need 40,000 more? Max Boot of course argues yes... others say no... Apparently, according to Cheney and Althouse, even pausing to consider that is dithering if not high treason on Obama's part.

It is hard to imagine anything more craven or vile than this current Obama White House. Take note that in the last several months of the GWB White House a thorough study was made of the War in Afghanistan. A plan was devised to refocus the war and make that war winnable.

The incoming Obama administration asked the GWB administration for that report. And asked the GWB administration to keep secret the report and the fact that the Obama administration was receiving this report.

Then once in the White House, the Obama administration released their own plan without attribution or reference to the GWB plan even though the Obama plan was virtually the GWB plan.

The Obama administration then allowed its spokesmen to go on national television and claim that the Obama administration inherited nothing from the GWB administration and that the Obama administration had to start from scratch.

Cute, isn't it? You get laziness, secrecy, plagiarism treachery and dishonesty all from Obama and his crew.

And now Obama will not even implement the plan he claimed was his own.

Obama siezed on afghanistan as a campaign issue; stupid thing to do, but he did it. Now he's stuck with it. 10 months into his presidency he owns the whole thing. He's got lots of options from total withdrawal to massive surge. There are options aplenty--all we need is a president who can make a fucking decision--Cheney is correct about dithering. Me? I'd get out of that shithole--it isnt fixable IMO. We don't need bases there--got them elsewhere.

Re Monty's assertion that somehow the brillance of the Obama afghan strategy (which is what by the way?) which has purportedly engaged the Paks in the war: Totally bogus. The Taliban and al queda, having for the most part been edged out of Afghanistan, are exploiting more fertile opportunities in Pakistan where muslim extremism is rife outside of Islamabad. To assert that somehow Obama is responsible for encouraging the Pak offensive is at best naive and bespeaks Obama's overwhelming ignorance of international affairs. The paks are acting in their own interest to save their asses from muslim extremism. As for drone strikes? been doing those for 7 years.

Uncle Cheney! And Uncle Rummy in one place. Awesome. It's like Emperor Palpatine and the Borg queen on the same stage.

I saw the text for this last night on Ace linked to The Weekly Standard, but I didn't know for sure what to make of it. Why was it printed as "Speech Tonight" and then immediately printed again, "As prepared for delivery"?

Oh.

Highlights then full text. But still, how does Weekly Standard get the full text of a speech not yet delivered? And further, after having it, who would need to actually listen? These ponderous questions confuse and frighten me.

The whole time I was reading it, twice, I was thinking, "This sure sounds like the things Uncle Cheney would actually say, I mean, as far as satire goes, I don't see much of anything funny in it." Except for rising from the dead, of course, rather like a mummy to deliver a smack down. Am I being punked again?

Hang on a minute, just one minute, shouldn't this be on Faux News and not CNN? Now I'm really confused.

"Can't someone, anyone explain to me how Obama doubling the number of troops in Afghanistan is "dithering"? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?"

Best to ask BO's had picked general McCrystal. He's the one who says it's not enough. Since BO fired the previous Co and handpicked Mac, you might wonder if they talked about strength levels etc. Do ya' think?

Re dithering: What is the strategy and to what purpose are the additional troops being applied? And are the troops at the level asked for by the field commander?

Yeah, monty--it's dithering--some 30thousand plus troops, less than half of which will be combat troops, the rest combat support and combat service support, will have no major impact on combat operations in Afghan terrain. You might want to look at what the 10th mountain division did in Italy in WWII, in a much smaller area of operations, to get a feel for what is needed for that kind of terrain.I do like Monty, by the way--reminds me of the other military idiot who was referred to as Monty in WWII. You do the name proud.

Dithering refers to his unwillingness to make a decision on the strategy, despite his statements in March that they completed exhaustive review of the issues, and had the strategy and leadership decided on, and would be implementing it.

But apparently he hadn't actually read the documents. Sort of like the health plan.

To further amplify on the "doubling"of forces. In military terms it's called piecemeal commitment of forces--It makes it possible to claim you are doing something by citing the number as "progress," but because the forces are too few to get the job done, the piecemeal commitment jeopardizes the very forces being assigned into theater. It violates the fundamental principle of war called mass.

FLS - "But Obama does indeed need to figure out what we want to do in Afghanistan. Rebuilding Iraq has left us broke -- we cannot rebuild another country."

===========

FLS is correct. The present economic and financial collapse of America - and the trillion dollars we ended up spending in a futile attempt to "give the noble Iraqis a functioning democratic nation" - has to make us strongly question the sustainability of the 2002 Bush-Neocon theme. The strategic mission theme that we will invade any dysfunctional Islamoid nation and rebuild it lest it become a haven for a few thousand terrorists.After or during Afghanistan..then what of the War on Iran to serve Our Special Friend Israel - and subsequent 30,000 per American debt to rebuild Iran? Somalia? What of the freedom-loving democracy hungry noble Somalis??What of Sudan, once and possibly future home to a couple thousand "Evildoers" in 2002 parlance? When does that War to Save noble Dafurans and other noble Sudanese on the other side start.How about the War for Noble Pakistanis, lest they become a long-term hiding spot for "future bin Ladens"? To pay for that one, we will have to sign away ownership of Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and 3 West Coast ports to our "Evildoer prevention" lender - China.Oh, and don't forget Mali, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and maybe a return War in Iraq to prevent "another building in America being attacked".

Or, we can rethink the whole idea of endless global war to save people of fucked up lands even if they show Iraqi-level ingratitude for it as noble freedom lovers are wont to do - as the best 9/11 response.

Althouse, when it comes to Afghanistan, you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground.

To be fair, Althouse doesn't need to be an expert on any given topic to blog about it. All she needs to be is an expert at saying insane things, which she may or may not believe, to keep this train rolling.

To be fair, Althouse doesn't need to be an expert on any given topic to blog about it. All she needs to be is an expert at saying insane things, which she may or may not believe, to keep this train rolling.

Rebuilding Iraq from all sources cost less than 100 billion. Pe that right wing source Wikipedia:

================Incorrect, Bob. You are using selective numbers. Quoting what we actually blew on the noble grateful Iraqi freedom lovers...while not counting the 800 billion we spent on military support of defending ourselves from noble grateful Iraqi freedom lovers trying to kill us, or the actions of our troops trying to stop one faction of grateful freedom lovers from killing another faction of noble democracy-hungry Iraqis.

Add 100 billion for the actual initial kinetic war to topple Saddam.

And as game show hosts say...There's more!!!

We aren't out of Iraq yet. Still bleeding us of billions every month. The bill for "military equipment reset" to replace all those planes, helos with airframe lifetimes burned out in Iraq service...all the destroyed and/or use burned out MIAIs, Bradleys, trucks, M2 50s - now believed to be 70 billion..is not tracked yet as a war cost until spending to restore equipment inventories happens. Or the 60-70 billion, some say 300 billion that will need to be spent on future VA and private employer or Obamacare health care expenses of those who served in Iraq and suffered physical or mental disability from it.

Sorry, your 100 billion is laughable.

And it's "small change" but add in the loss of 28-32 billion Rumsfeld blew on upgrading Iraqi military bases now carried on the books as "investments" in America's "long term overseas bases". Inc. 9 billion spent on 6 "superbases" - if the greatful noble Iraqis throw us out.

==================Anti-American and traitor Freder "I'd rather see thousands of Americans die than see an innocent until proven guilty Muslim fighter have his civil rights violated" - returns with the repetitous dumb Lefty lie that America "killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq" and blame for it goes to "Bush lies".

No, greatful noble freedom-loving Iraqis killed 90% of those greatful noble freedom-loving Iraqis of different factions. Al Qaeda killed another 5%. And we killed 5%...and in general, those we killed were armed men in civilian clothing seeking to kill Americans or engaged in trying to kill other greatful noble Iraqi freedom-lovers.Was Bush 100% correct? No. Neither were Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, Truman, JFK is what they asserted. Doesn't exactly make WWII, for example, "a war based on FDR's lies where we killed millions in war crimes...."

I don't even think you need a clipboard poll asking U-Wisc @ Madison students wild about honoring CHeney.

Just make up about 20 posters and hammer them in at random open grassy spots on campus. Add a picture of Cheney striking a Fairey-inspired Obama-like pose for visual impact.

"Proposed site of statue to Richard Cheney. Most famous and influential UW @ Madison Masters Degree holder ever. CEO, Statesman, Sec of Defense, Chief of Staff, VP, Warmonger. Contact President UW, or Board of Trustees to register approval or disapproval of Tribute Statue to our own Dick Cheney..."

Note: The Cheney statue will cost taxpayers nothing and will result in no increase in student fees. Anonymous wealthy alumini donors have already collected funds to pay for everything.Statue will be 20 feet high, surrounded by electrified fence, made of vandal-proof solid stainless steel.

Retired General Paul Eaton, senior adviser to the National Security Network:

"The record is clear: Dick Cheney and the Bush administration were incompetent war fighters. They ignored Afghanistan for 7 years with a crude approach to counter-insurgency warfare best illustrated by: 1. Deny it. 2. Ignore it. 3. Bomb it. While our intelligence agencies called the region the greatest threat to America, the Bush White House under-resourced our military efforts, shifted attention to Iraq, and failed to bring to justice the masterminds of September 11."

"Islamofacist" is a rather unfortunate, ignorant and now-dated dated word that Zionists and Neocons tried putting in wide use to stoke up American support for Israeli Settlers (their foes are fascists like the Nazis!) or in their other choice from the Neocon phrasebook 'bin Laden is Hitler' and we are fighting "World War 4" (Podhoeretz) to "bring freedom to grateful Muslims in a calewalk" (Akerman).

Sadly for Zionist and Neocon wordsmiths, and the people who repeat their words as Gospel truth...radical Islam has little in common with fascism. So Islamofacism is as nonsensical as Corporatistzuluism.It is a good word to keep people intellectually lazy and not understand what Wahabbism or Salafism is, what Shiite variant makes the Mullahs of Iran tick.

I think Althouse's whole point is that the petition drive would be entertaining theater worthy of being caught on tape.

I get Althouse's idea. It's a deliciously funny one. I suggested another variant. Possibly a better TV moment than a few students at a time confronting a "Cheney Tribute" poster with self-rightous fury. Packs of hundreds of anti-Cheney students howling with indignation - instead - in front of the President's house or pushing for a statue of Zarqawi.

A few years back, some spoofers in Denver drove PETA, U of C students, and various childless female animal lovers wild with rumors a wealthy businessman was going to donate turkeys to the poor. Except he was going to deliver them live in trucks. And suggested that in meeting the trucks, on their way from Nebraska and due to arrive next morning at 10AM...the poor bring their own knives and garbage bags..

Look, when the candidate Obama called Afghanistan a war of necessity he meant a war that was necessary for him to support to become President. He has achieved that goal, so I guess I am confused that Cheney is confused.

Cheney happens to be one of the few grown ups around which I expect is the reason the old 60s lefties hate him so much. Pretty plain talking and never talking pretty

Robert Cook, you're making my point. And my point is this, the people from the previous administration are liars. They appear to be no different than Bush with their proclamations that Iraq had WMDs. I guess it took Bush to discredit those from the previous administration that in fact, Iraq did not have WMDs. As evidenced by what Rice and Powell had to say.

Robert Cook, you're making my point. And my point is this, the people from the previous administration are liars. They appear to be no different than Bush with their proclamations that Iraq had WMDs. I guess it took Bush to discredit those from the previous administration that in fact, Iraq did not have WMDs. As evidenced by what Rice and Powell had to say..

But none of them invaded Iraq, and none of them trusted as their point man, Ahmed Chalibi, a man known around the world as an embezzler and thief who once fled Jordan on fraud charges in trunk of a car! It just cannot get an stupider than that.

Had 9/11 happened on the previous administration, I have no doublt they would have also went into Iraq, to stop that regime from using their WMDs against us. You do remember 9/11 don't you? Remember the anthrax scare? How about the sniper shit in the DC area? People were scared, and nobody, and I mean nobody knew what to do. 20/20 and all that shit, sure.

"Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." -- Al Gore, 2002

"Sorry, but when some Islamofascist shithead self-detonates in a market square. . .only a fucking moron can somehow trace culpability to Bush and Cheney."

Hoosier, you realise you've just described the entire Democrat party, don't you? Fucking morons, traitors, historical illiterates and anti-Semites. Although, I will say I did like C4's wailing about the "trillions" of dollars spent on those ungrateful Iraqi camel jockeys - if it were up to me, I'd take every single cent we throw down the rathole of government education and give it to the Iraqis. To paraphrase that idiotic bumper sticker, it would be a wonderful day when Iraq had all the money it needed to have a functioning democratic society and every public school "teacher" had to stand in rags with cardboard signs under bridges to fund their government propaganda camps.

Oh, and Cookie - I'll make you a deal. I'll support throwing Dick Cheney's 'fat ass into a Supermax prison' if, in return, I can boot your worthless, ungrateful, treasonous ass into a North Korean gulag where you can spend the rest of your days pondering the evils of the United States.

Father Martin @12:17 pm finds the salient point. Why would Bush and Cheney put forth the WMD argument knowing it was a lie and would be discovered to their detriment? They believed there were WMD's, Tony Blair believed there were WMD's, the intelligence agencies of the US,UK, France Germany, Italy, Saudi Arabia and Israel believed there were WMD's. John Kerry and Hillary Clinton believed there were WMD's. Saddam Hussein believed there were WMD's.

In any case, Bush's speech before the war began refers only to chemical and biological agents which Saddam had already been known to use, and to the possible future use of nuclear devices. As it happened, US forces did discover sizable caches of chemical weapons.

Now, something I've always wanted to ask someone in the "Bush Lied" crowd is, if Chimpy McBushitler and Darth Cheney are as unbelievably evil and crafty as you guys maintain, what in God's name kept them from faking up a few nukes or some barrels of anthrax to cover their asses? I mean, Obama would have no problem with that, right? The answer to that question is obvious-- they were too honest, and admitted to not finding what they expected to find.

I think it would be interesting to start a movement to have a monument to the man erected here in on campus. You could do a Michael Moore (or Uncle Jimbo) -style film project: Go around with a clipboard and try to get people to sign a petition.

Ok Althouse, you think it would be interesting. You think it is a good idea. Then do it. Actually, do it.

"As it happened, US forces did discover sizable caches of chemical weapons."

I guess this is debatable, depending on what one means by "sizable," but if we mean: a cache of sufficient size, recent vintage and potency to present a real threat to any other nation...no, we didn't.

We found aging remnants, few in number and of weak potency, scraps that had been overlooked when Saddam had his weapons stores destroyed in the mid-90s. They might have made a few people sick if their contents had been leaked, but they were no threat to America or even to Saddam's neighbors.

I agree, the Democrats you quoted bloviating about Saddam's nonexistent WMD were either liars or fools or both, just as the Republicans were and are. I don't know whether they (and the Republicans) all willfully lied about the WMD or whether they were credulous fools who believed what they were told by others, or whether they didn't give a damn, just assuming as a given that Saddam had WMD and were happy to accuse him without bothering to do any verification because it played well in speeches. Nearly everyone in Washington wants to look tough on crime, tough on drugs, tough on "the enemy," whomever he or they may be at any given time, and as opportunities to pander present themselves.

Saddam was a thug; he had at one time had chemical weapons and nerve agents; Americans had been led to have a (not unjustified) reflexive abhorrence of him; it's to be expected that corrupt hypocrites of either party in Washington would bandy about Saddam's name and accuse him of still maintaining and even building new WMD without bothering to ask for proof. Such reckless boilerplate accusations against the foreign enemy (or enemies) du jour are as easy to make as is the choice to kiss babies on the campaign trail.

Why would Bush and Cheney put forth the WMD argument knowing it was a lie and would be discovered to their detriment? They believed there were WMD's,

After 9/11, the most important thing for Bush and Cheney to do was take action, lest the US look as powerless as we felt. But pulling a bunch of bearded fanatics out of caves in Afghanistan was a lot harder than it sounded. There was a known bad Muslim/Arab guy in Iraq, and Iraq could be subdued by conventional methods -- we had already ousted them from Kuwait.

At that point, it didn't matter if Iraq had WMDs or not. We needed a pretext, and WMDs were it.

Now, we know there were no WMDs in Iraq but no one really cares. People like Aaron are convinced we found WMDs. Bush and Cheney likely took a chance:

If we invaded Iraq andif we subdued Saddam Hussein andif we controlled the whole country andif we had the time and effort to search diligently for WMDs andif we still found nothing,that still wouldn't have made Iraq a southern Sweden. And, we would have successfully defeated a bad Muslim guy, even if he wasn't the Muslim guy.

Plus our inability to find WMD in Iraq merely made the Iraqis look crafty, while trying to plant WMD would have been leaked by someone at some point.

"What is not debatable is that Saddam's illegal stonewalling of UN inspectors allowed these caches to exist."

"These caches" you assert "existed" were garbage, leftovers. They did not confirm any assertions made that Hussein had WMD. They did not really "exist" in any meaning sense, just as the scraps left in the back of one's fridge for ten years or on the bottom shelf of the cupboard do not represent "provisions."

As to Hussein's intransigence about inspections, Scott Ritter has said that the CIA had been infiltrating agents into the ranks of the inspection teams in order that they could spy on aspects of Hussein's regime that had nothing to do with the finding of WMD. Hussein knew this and objected to requests for searches that were obviously spying expeditions. Even so, contrary to popular conception, Iraq did not expel the weapons inspectors in the late 90s; Richard Butler withdrew them.

http://www.fair.org/activism/usat-iraq.html

After 9/11, before we attacked Iraq, Hussein relented and allowed the UN inspectors back in, and gave them, after some initial obstruction, full access to wherever they asked to search. After four months in country, the new inspections teams had found no evidence of any WMD. Rather than allow them the several more months they wanted to complete their search and verify their findings, the Bush administration warned them to exit Iraq immediately, as an attack had been ordered and the launch date had been set.

Doesn't sound much to me like the Bush administration were too concerned with avoiding war by verifying that actual status of Hussein's arms. So much for our invasion having been the "last choice" option.

As for whether Bush, Cheney, et al "believed" Hussein had WMD, I don't know. Possibly some in the administration did, probably others did not, (as no hard intelligence existed to suggest such was the case). They did, however, lie. They never hesitated to state their claims as certainties, and they never offered equivocations to suggest Hussein "may have" or was "reported to have" WMD; they threw around claims like "the evidence is bullet-proof," "we know where the weapons are,"there is no doubt that Saddam now has WMD;" and "My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. . . ."

And so much more:

http://micksussman.com/text/bush-intelligence.html

Even if they had convinced themselves that Hussein was building WMD, or even if, as I suspect, they merely assumed they would find enough left-over caches of weapons that they could easily point to them as "proof" of their accusations against Hussein, they certainly lied about the amount of proof they had--none--and about the extent to which their claims were pure supposition--all of it. They never even claimed the stray bits of weapons they found supported their pre-war claims, as they had enough sense at least to know this was insupportable.

Gregory said... Ok Althouse, you think it would be interesting. You think it is a good idea. Then do it. Actually, do it.

Not a chance in hell. You are all talk.

Althouse is newly wed to a man who literally idolizes Dick Cheney as his #1 hero of recent times. Meade even goes on about his love of Cheney to strangers on pblic buses (Althouse mentioned this in a post some weeks back). No doubt she is getting special attention in bed tonight because she went to bat for het man's hero.

It doesn't change the fact that the Bush/Cheney Afghanistan policy was declared a failure by Bush's own analysts.

It doesn't change the fact that Bush/Cheney failed to capture or kill Bin Laden at the battle of Tora Bora or thereafter.

It doesn't change the fact that Bush/Cheney violated U.S. laws and basic morality, and undermined the American moral high ground on the world's stage, when they turned us into a country that overtly tortures.

"A few years back, some spoofers in Denver drove PETA, U of C students, and various childless female animal lovers wild with rumors a wealthy businessman was going to donate turkeys to the poor. Except he was going to deliver them live in trucks. And suggested that in meeting the trucks, on their way from Nebraska and due to arrive next morning at 10AM...the poor bring their own knives and garbage bags.."

LOL!

Oh, I hope there were actually turkeys for the poor or else everyone with sense realized it was a spoof.

One of the better things about living in the Bay Area was that there were lots of vegetarians where my husband worked and for the employer Holiday turkeys, they'd give their turkey to him because they knew he had a family.

Several years in a row we had up to three free turkeys.

I actually got a turkey from my boss when I was living in a dorm in college. Luckily it was in Minneapolis and the thing stayed frozen solid in the trunk of the car. :-)

Robert Cook said... "Allen S.I agree, the Democrats you quoted bloviating about Saddam's nonexistent WMD were either liars or fools or both, just as the Republicans were and are."

Thank you. That's my whole point. If Bush lied, then all of those Democrats also lied. It pisses me off to no end, that the commenters here, that always call Bush a liar, conveniently forget that it was the Democrats who first put forth the meme, and supported the idea that Iraq had WMDs. What was Bush to do?

What a little bitch Obama is becoming. Started off with his chickenhawk bullshit about getting tough in Afghanistan, and now that he's the POTUS, he doesn't want to be bothered. He'll get back to us at a later date.

He needn't have repeated unverified accusations, and if he really wanted to avoid war except as a last resort, he could have allowed the weapons inspectors to complete their task and provide an analysis of their findings. As it was, he sent the new inspectors in reluctantly, then aborted their uncompleted mission in order to launch his already-planned invasion.

As has been said here and elsewhere, the lies of the Dems notwithstanding, none of them initiated a war of aggression against Iraq. (Although Clinton continued dropping bombs in Iraq, in addition to the sanctions program, which has been alleged to have caused the deaths of many children and elderly in Iraq. Clinton is a fraternity brother of Bush's in the club of war criminals. Obama is a new pledge in that club.)

Robert Cook, again, you forget one thing when comparing Bush to those other Democrats, and it is this, 9/11. You need to ask yourself, after knowing what those prominent Democrats had to say about Iraq, that if Clinton had still been president on 9/11, would he have invaded Iraq. We will never know the answer to that question, however, read what those Democrats had to say about Iraq, and you might find the answer.

You're right, we don't know what Clinton (or Gore) would have done in response to 9/11. I don't think we can fairly assume they would have attacked Iraq, as that was a complete non sequitur, but...who knows? I remember hearing the calls to pursue bin Laden to the ends of the earth, which switched abruptly to calls to invade Iraq and get Hussein. I was startled. What?! Iraq? Hussein? Huh?

There was always a total disconnect for me and it never for a moment seemed understandable that we would foment war against a non-aggressive third party, and the government never provided any clarifying justification other than uncorroborated (and untrue) claims of Hussein's imminent threat to us.

IF Clinton (or Gore) had invaded Iraq as a response to 9/11, they would have been equally guilty of a crime for doing so as is Bush.